To Milyutin, Krestinsky, Kursky/
[After February 2, 1919]

*Izvestiya* of Feb. 2 reports that the Moscow People's Bank (i.e., the leaders of our all-citizens' cooperation) have been exposed (by Kiev newspapers) in speculative acquisition of 50 carloads of sugar, hand in hand with the machinations of "grain-growers," kulaks and landowners of Ukraine, with Skoropadsky² at their head!³

It is necessary: 1) to conduct intensified agitation in the newspapers on this matter; — a hounding of cooperative leaders, their exposure to the end (distinguishing this from the use of the apparatus); 2) to appoint an investigative commission.

¹ A document typed on a typewriter and addressed to the persons named in the note with Lenin's own signature, is preserved in the Institute's archive in several copies.

² P. P. Skoropadsky — general, major landowner. After the Rada was dispersed by the Germans, he was proclaimed hetman on April 29, 1918 at a kulak-landowner congress of "grain-growers"; with the support of German bayonets he remained in power until the end of 1918.

³ Lenin has in mind the article "From the Past of the Skoropadsky Period" in No. 24 of *Izvestiya VTsIK* of February 2, 1919.

On March [date] 1949 at a session of the SNK the question of cooperation was again discussed; Lenin's theses and M. I. Frumkin's theses were adopted as the basis. (The theses have not been preserved in the SNK materials.)

The text was written in Lenin's hand in black ink. "Milyutin, Krestinsky, Kursky" is written in blue pencil. At the bottom of the text there is a note: "to the archive for reference by close associates" — in ordinary pencil. Ed.